EMMA
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Jeremy Northam, Alan Cumming, Ewan McGregor, Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson, Polly Walker, Sophie Thompson. Screenplay: Douglas McGrath. Director: Douglas McGrath. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
When last we left Miss Emma Woodhouse, she was living in Beverly Hills, happily in love with her step-brother...oh, and her name was Cher. She was the lead character in a smart and utterly charming 1994 film called CLUELESS, although she was never expressly named, and that makes EMMA an experience of intense deja vu, even more so given the spate of recent adaptations of other Jane Austen novels. That places everyone involved with EMMA in positions of uncomfortable but inevitable immediate comparison -- director Douglas McGrath trying to portray upper class life in 19th century England as artfully as SENSE AND SENSIBILITY's Ang Lee, Gwyneth Paltrow competing with Alicia Silverstone for brattish adorability, and so on. Given these challenges, EMMA becomes almost more entertaining than it already is on its own merits, another witty and winning addition to the Austen canon, in which Paltrow becomes a bona fide leading lady.
Paltrow's Emma is a young woman living in the Surrey town of Highbury, where her recent successful pairing of her former governess (Greta Scacchi) and landowner Mr. Weston (James Cosmo) has her eager to play matchmaker again. Her target is the recently arrived Harriet Smith (Toni Collette), whom Emma sees as an ideal match for the minister Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming); Mr. Elton, however, has designs on someone else entirely. Mr. Frank Churchill (Ewan McGregor) is another possible suitor, though Emma isn't sure that she doesn't want him for herself. All this is observed by Emma's brother-in-law Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam), who tries to discourage her interference with honest counsel, then finds himself caught up in Emma's complicated romantic world.
As I considered Gwyneth Paltrow's performance in EMMA, I recalled an old George Carlin routine in which he concluded that the reason dogs were more expressive than cats was that dogs had eyebrows. This observation in no way means to compare Paltrow to a dog (far from it, though that is another kettle of hormones entirely), but to describe why I think Paltrow may be the most expressive young actress working: in short, she has phenomenal eyebrows. If it seems I am doing an injustice to her ability to interpret a line, or to her impressive British accent, I do not mean to do so. It is simply that there are moments in EMMA where Paltrow adopts a facial expression so utterly perfect that her infuriating ability to make you care about her despite her pettiness and manipulation seems drawn from the soul of Austen's novel. There are actors in films today that it is distressingly clear will never know how to act with a degree of subtlety which allows a shift of the eye or a hint of a frown to advance their character. At the ripe old age of 22, Gwyneth Paltrow gives a clinic on acting for the screen in EMMA.
It is a blessing that she is able to do so, since she has to carry much of the first half of the film. McGrath's rookie direction is somewhat static, and the Harriet-Emma-Mr. Elton triangle is hampered by a surprisingly stuffy performance by Toni Collette. It is the late introduction of Frank Churchill and Mr. Elton's new wife (Juliet Stevenson) which kick-starts EMMA into enough energy to match its cleverness. Ewan McGregor (the heroin-addicted Renton in the current TRAINSPOTTING) infuses Churchill with a charisma which proves a match for Emma's nonchalance about her own love life; a scene in which he seizes her fancy by proving men can gossip as well as women is an utter joy. Emma finds a match of another kind in Mrs. Elton, a self-obsessed busybody whom Emma comes to dislike intensely, perhaps because they are too much alike, and Juliet Stevenson plays the part of the shrew with a casual good humor which undercuts the stereotype. And I would be remiss in not pointing out the delightful performances by Sophie Thompson as the garrulous spinster Miss Bates and Jeremy Northam as the dashing Mr. Knightley.
It is more than a bit distracting at times to be only 12 months removed from the release of CLUELESS; duplicated details like Harriet burning silly little mementos of Mr. Elton lose some of their snap in their familiarity. But McGrath's screenplay is a gem of humor and sparkling characterizations, and is more than faithful to the spirit of his source material. Most importantly, he has cast his lead role with a keen sense of its challenges -- he needed an actor with a willingness to play a vain, foolish and snobbish young woman without winking at us to make sure we don't dislike her. She trusts her ability to make Emma's good heart shine through her youthful conviction in her own infallibility, and McGrath is wise to trust her as well. Both prove far from clueless in that respect.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 EMMA-nent domains: 8.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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